TA Loeffler's Adventures that Move

Given a big dump of snow earlier in the week, we’d hoped to get to ski today to try out my new boot/binding combination that we installed during Wednesday’s gift of a snow day. We gave up after only ten minutes because so many rocks were showing through on the trail. Thursday’s eight degrees had wiped out all of Wednesday’s snow gains and more. I changed my skis for sled and went to work getting this week’s weekend training goal moved over to the “done column.”

The schedule said “40 kg drag over 8 km” but I had been feeling strong in the dragging department so I upped it to 50 kg. The quicker I am able to get to the goal of 70 kg towing ability, the more I can surpass it and contribute to making the first week of the expedition a little bit easier. The first week will likely be epic as we have to move at least half of our expedition food and fuel up from sea level to 6000 feet up over the toe of the Brede Glacier. It should be a giant grunt and that keeps me training hard. Here I am dragging my load across the road and over the plow berm to the trailhead. The weight in my sled is a combination of weight plates, sand bags, water, and bags of road salt. I started with approximately 50 kg in the sled today though when I finished the sled had taken on extra snow and water so who knows what I crossed the road back with.

We followed both major and minor trails in the outback of Pippy Park. Many creeks and boggy areas are now open and flowing making for some interesting steps and moves with the sled. Here I’m wrestling with the full 110 pounds as I get the sled ready to cross a small stream. Dragging 110 pounds over flat snow is very easy. If you add any slope or any necessity of “manhandling” the sled, then you quickly notice just how heavy it really is. The weight also gives you an intimate understanding of the coefficients of friction. Snow equals little friction equals good. Rocks and road equal lots of friction equal bad. Or good if you are looking to work hard and train hard.

I love this shot that Marian took. It catches the moment in time. The ripples in the small puddle and the change in friction coefficient from snow to rock. I’m working hard here to pull the load over to the next patch of snow on “river right” while at the same time trying to keep my ski boots out of the water and therefore dry. Not long after this moment we were almost mowed down by six quad trikes beating it down the trail. Fortunately, we got off the trail in the nick of time.

As I pulled this morning, there was lots of time for thought and contemplation (as there will be in Greenland-can’t wait). I was thinking about momentum and how it easier to keep the sled in motion than start it from a stand still. The same seems true about many things-it’s easier to keep training moving over time than stopping and starting. It’s easier, in the long run, to keep a project moving that having to get the energy to revive it once it has stalled. I know, at one point, I realized that it made sense only to start something new when I had enough time, space, and energy to keep it going. Interesting to revisit that this morning in an embodied way with the sled. I’d been feeling that life is very full with teaching, training, presenting, and getting ready for two expeditions that a few things have dropped off the momentum bandwagon. I’ll have to pick them up again when a few other things have finished.

I’ve been presenting in schools a bunch lately-the bookings seem to come in fits and spurts. As an odometer moment fan, I celebrated passing “the 31,000 students presented to” mark this week when I visited St. Mary Elementary and Holy Redeemer School on Thursday. I’ve started working working on a Google Map showing all the schools I’ve presented at…I’ve got about half entered. You can see a preview of the “work in progress” map here.

I leave for Iceland in a month. I look forward to sharing more of the training adventures and the expedition with you.

My gallant and gregarious group of guessers guessed with gusto and after only three clues, the name of my next peak was gained: Gunnbjørn Fjeld. Gunnbjørn Fjeld (also named Hvitserk, Gunnbjørnfjeld, Gunnbjornfjeld, Gunnbjorn Fjell, Mt. Gunnbjorn) is the highest peak in Greenland and the highest peak in the Arctic. It stands 3694 m or 12,119 feet above sea level) and is located within the Watkins Range on the east coast of Greenland.

Revealing the clues…

Clue One was a picture of the famous ’80s “A -Team” and referred to my “A-Team” of climbing the highest peaks in Antarctica and the Arctic within six months on one another.

Clue Two was a picture of a British band called the Nunataks, a group of musical scientists based in Antarctica. Gunnbjørn Fjeld is a nunatak which is a rocky peak that sticks out through glacial ice.

Clue Three was a picture of me pulling a sled during my polar training expedition with Matty NcNair in 2009. It was on that trip that the seed to cross the Greenland expedition was first planted.

Congrats to Priya who put all the pieces together first and to Trien who was not long behind her (and who was led astray by Google). Thanks to all who played another round of “What’s TA Climbing Next?”

I hadn’t been planning a major expedition for this spring but when I learned of this one, I couldn’t pass it up. For not only are we climbing Gunnbjørn Fjeld, we are crossing 300 km or so of the Greenland Icecap to get there first. Ever since reading and following Göran Kropp’s expedition to Everest where he first rode a bicycle from Sweden to Kathmandu to begin his climb, I have always wanted to do an expedition which required a major effort to reach the peak I was trying to climb. This expedition fits the bill to a “T” and helps me do another of the tasks I set for myself in my Everest 3.0 planning manifesto, a Greenland Ice Cap crossing. Though I’d originally imagined crossing east to west, this crossing will be north to south.

Our small team of five will fly from Iceland to Mittarfik Nerlerit Inaat Airport (Constable Point) in mid April. One of Greenland’s most isolated public airports, it lies 45 km north east of Ittoqqortoormiit. From Ittoqqortoormiit, “the place with the big houses”, we will travel nearly 170 kilometres by snowmobile over the sea ice of Scoresby Sound to reach the starting point of our expedition. Scoresby Sound is the world’s longest fjord and with its ancillary fjords is the largest fjord complex in the world.

From there we will sled-haul all of our provisions for a 30 day, 300 km crossing of the ice cap to reach Gunnbjørn Fjeld. We will also do a few first ascents along the way. As this is thought to be a “world’s first” in terms of a ski route, we may get to name the mountains we climb, how cool would that be. At the end of the expedition we will be picked up by ski equipped Twin Otter aircraft and fly back to Iceland. I’ve attached the map of our route and you can click on the Gunnbjørn Fjeld wikipedia entry to see a map of Greenland with the location of the mountain starred.

I have begun to train in ernest and plan to blog during preparations and the expedition itself if I can find a sponsor for a satellite phone and airtime (my Everest sat phone doesn’t work in Greenland). It will be a busy six weeks as I finish up the semester, train, and prepare all of my gear for this amazing expedition. I look forward to having all of you along once again.